Sunday, February 23, 2014

600 year old mystery manuscript decoded by University of Bedfordshire professor

AN award-winning professor from the University
has followed in the footsteps of Indiana Jones by cracking the code of a
600 year old manuscript, deemed as ‘the most mysterious’ document in
the world.

Stephen Bax, Professor of Applied
Linguistics, has just become the first professional linguist to crack
the code of the Voynich manuscript using an analytical approach.

The world-renowned manuscript is full of illustrations of exotic
plants, stars, and mysterious human figures, as well as many pages
written in an unknown text.

Up until now the 15th century cryptic work has baffled
scholars, cryptographers and codebreakers who have failed to read a
single letter of the script or any word of the text.

Over time it has attained an infamous reputation, even featuring in
the latest hit computer game Assassin’s Creed, as well as in the Indiana
Jones novels, when Indiana decoded the Voynich and used it to find the
‘Philosopher's Stone’.

However in reality no one has come close to revealing the Voynich’s true messages.

Many grand theories have been proposed. Some suggest it was the work
of Leonardo da Vinci as a boy, or secret Cathars, or the lost tribe of
Israel, or most recently Aztecs … some have even proclaimed it was done
by aliens!

Professor Bax however has begun to unlock the mystery meanings of the
Voynich manuscript using his wide knowledge of mediaeval manuscripts
and his familiarity with Semitic languages such as Arabic. Using careful
linguistic analysis he is working on the script letter by letter.

“The manuscript has a lot of illustrations of stars and plants. I was
able to identify some of these, with their names, by looking at
mediaeval herbal manuscripts in Arabic and other languages, and I then
made a start on a decoding, with some exciting results.”

YouTube Video 47:11

Voynich - a provisional, partial decoding of the Voynich script

Among the words he has identified is the term for Taurus, alongside a
picture of seven stars which seem to be the Pleiades, and also the word
KANTAIRON alongside a picture of the plant Centaury, a known mediaeval
herb, as well as a number of other plants.

Although Professor Bax’s decoding is still only partial, it has
generated a lot of excitement in the world of codebreaking and
linguistics because it could prove a crucial breakthrough for an
eventual full decipherment.

“My aim in reporting on my findings at this stage is to encourage
other linguists to work with me to decode the whole script using the
same approach, though it still won’t be easy. That way we can finally
understand what the mysterious authors were trying to tell us,” he
added.

“But already my research shows conclusively that the manuscript is
not a hoax, as some have claimed, and is probably a treatise on nature,
perhaps in a Near Eastern or Asian language.”

Nikola
Tesla was born around midnight, between July 9 and July 10, 1856 during
a fierce lightning storm. According to family legend, midway through
the birth, the midwife wrung her hands and declared the lightning a bad
omen. This child will be a child of darkness, she said, to which his
mother replied: “No. He will be a child of light.”

2. HE WAS REALLY FUNNY

Most
people don’t know that Tesla had a terrific sense of humor, Seifer
said. For example, after dining with writer and poet Rudyard Kipling, he
wrote this in a correspondence to a close friend:

April 1, 1901My dear Mrs. Johnson,What
is the matter with inkspiller Kipling? He actually dared to invite me
to dine in an obscure hotel where I would be sure to get hair and
cockroaches in the soup.Yours truly,N. Tesla

3. HE AND EDISON WERE RIVALS, BUT NOT SWORN ENEMIES

Many have characterized Tesla and inventor Thomas Edison as enemies (see this and this,)
but Carlson says this relationship has been misrepresented. Early in
his career, Tesla worked for Edison, designing direct current
generators, but famously quit to pursue his own project: the alternating
current induction motor. Sure, they were on different sides of the
so-called “Current Wars,” with Edison pushing for direct current and
Tesla for alternating current. But Carlson considers them the Steve Jobs
and Bill Gates of their time: one the brilliant marketer and
businessman and the other a visionary and “tech guy.”

On a rare
occasion, Edison attended a conference where Tesla was speaking. Edison,
hard of hearing and not wanting to be spotted, slipped into the back of
the auditorium to listen to the lecture. But Tesla spotted Edison in
the crowd, called attention to him and led the audience in giving him a
standing ovation.

Seifer qualifies it more, saying the two had a
love/hate relationship. At first Edison dismissed Tesla, but came to
eventually respect him, he said.

“When there were fires at Tesla’s laboratory, Edison provided him a lab, so clearly there was some mutual respect,” Seifer said

4. HE DEVELOPED THE IDEA FOR SMARTPHONE TECHNOLOGY IN 1901

Tesla
may have had a brilliant mind, but he was not as good at reducing his
ideas to practice, Carlson said. In the race to develop transatlantic
radio, Tesla described to his funder and business partner, J.P. Morgan, a
new means of instant communication that involved gathering stock quotes
and telegram messages, funneling them to his laboratory, where he would
encode them and assign them each a new frequency. That frequency would
be broadcast to a device that would fit in your hand, he explained. In
other words, Tesla had envisioned the smart phone and wireless internet,
Carlson said, adding that of all of his ideas, that was the one that
stopped him in his tracks.

This
tesla coil snuffed out the power in Colorado Springs when this photo
was taken. Photo by Dickenson V. Alley, photographer at the Century
Magazines via Wikimedia Commons.

“He was the first to be
thinking about the information revolution in the sense of delivering
information for each individual user,” Carlson said.

He also conceived of, but never developed technology for radar, X-rays, a particle beam “death ray” and radio astronomy.

5. ‘HE SHOOK THE POOP OUT OF MARK TWAIN’

One
famous legend surrounding the eccentric Tesla was that he had an
earthquake machine in his Manhattan laboratory that shook his building
and nearly brought down the neighborhood during experiments.

Tesla’s
device wasn’t actually an earthquake machine, Carlson said, but a high
frequency oscillator. A piston set underneath a platform in the
laboratory shook violently as it moved, another experiment in more
efficient electricity.

It didn’t bring the block to ruins, Carlson
said, but it did “shake the poop out of Mark Twain.” Twain was known
for having digestive problems, so Tesla, who knew Twain through their
gentlemen’s club, invited him over. He instructed Twain to stand on the
platform while he flipped on the oscillator. After about 90 seconds,
Twain jumped off the platform and ran for the facilities.

6. HE HAD FAMOUS FRIENDS

People
aren’t aware that he was close friends with conservationist John Muir,
Seifer said. Muir, one of the founders of the Sierra Club, loved that
Tesla’s hydroelectric power system was a clean energy system. It runs
on waterfalls, which Tesla referred to as “running on the wheelwork of
nature.” Also among his friends: financiers Henry Clay Frick and Thomas
Fortune Ryan. “He lived in the Waldorf Astoria, at the height of the
gilded age,” Seifer said, adding that his fame later in life lessened.

7. PEARLS DROVE HIM CRAZY

Tesla
could not stand the sight of pearls, to the extent that he refused to
speak to women wearing them. When his secretary wore pearl jewelry, he
sent her home for the day. No one knows why he had such an aversion, but
Tesla had a very particular sense of style and aesthetics, Carlson
said, and believed that in order to be successful, one needed to look
successful. He wore white gloves to dinner every night and prided
himself on being a “dapper dresser.”

Every photograph of Tesla, he said, is very carefully constructed to capture his “good side.”

8. HE HAD A PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORY AND A FEAR OF GERMS

Tesla
had what’s known as a photographic memory. He was known to memorize
books and images and stockpile visions for inventions in his head. He
also had a powerful imagination and the ability to visualize in three
dimensions, which he used to control the terrifying vivid nightmares he
suffered from as a child. It’s in part what makes him such a mystical
and eccentric character in popular culture, Carlson said. He was also
known for having excessive hygiene habits, born out of a near-fatal bout
of cholera as a teenager.